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You are wise, dear brother in Christ, for ending your sidebar because there is no point in arguing in the face of persistent circular reasoning or begging of the question – or any other logical fallacy for that matter.

I too am ending my part in the sidebar with this post because when the difference in the correspondents’ sense of reality is so great, no useful dialogue can result.

For instance, to a person whose sense of reality is based on the Newtonian scale of a mechanistic universe (materialism at scales greater than quantum and less than astronomic) time may be perceived as a measure only, a scalar quantity, an arrow of time. The man took a week to climb the mountain and he's on the mountain top; there is only the present. The past is gone. The future may be predicted and artifacts may be discovered - but only the present can be sensed.

But Relativity and Quantum Mechanics shows that the physics of the Newtonian scale fails in the very large and very small scales. It is not an acceptable scale for materialists these days.

And wouldn’t you know, time is at the very heart of the matter.

Indeed, the lowly photon is the clue. The photon although traveling a worldline “in” space/time is moving at the speed of light, the “null path,” and therefore, for the photon no time elapses. If the photon could be an observer, to it that mountain climber’s entire life is not even a blur.

But to another man accelerating through space obviously slower than the speed of light, that mountain climber may not only have scaled the mountain but got married, had kids and grandkids and then died all while he was enjoying his dinner on his spaceship.

And considering the equivalence principle even more events may occur in the lives of the mountain climber’s descendants in mere seconds from the viewpoint of yet another man approaching a black hole.

Of course at the opposite extreme, the quantum, we must now consider Schrödinger’s cat which is dead and alive - and Everett's multi-world physical cosmology. The man climbed the mountain and also didn't climb the mountain, he got married and he also did not get married and so on.

And if there is even one more dimension of time as some world class geometric physicists have theorized then time is not a plane but a volume. Past, present, future all exist at once - like Everett's theory on steroids. The mountain climber is on the bottom and on the top of the mountain, alive and dead, young and old, here and there, now and then – all at once (if any observer could actually get outside of space/time to perceive it.)

Bottom line, in twentieth century advanced physics space/time is a continuum and time is a dimension of that continuum. Moreover, if multi-temporal dimensions exist then the direction of time can be reversed, cause>effect and effect>cause - time as a vector not a scalar.

But no mere creature can remove himself from space/time to see such things. Indeed, the full number and types of dimensions is both unknown and unknowable for the same reason we cannot rule out massless particles which have no measurable direct or indirect effect.

Only God, the Creator of the physical, is not bound by His creation, anything physical, including space/time and physical causality. Only He can see all that there is all at once. He alone knows objective truth. He alone speaks objective truth.

Indeed, God is Truth – for when He says a thing, it is. It is because He says it.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. - Genesis 1:3

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. - Psalms 33:6

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. – John 14:6

In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; - Titus 1:2

For all these years, the theologians have been closer to understanding reality than any other knowledge discipline. As Jastrow said:

At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greated by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. - God and the Astronomers page 107.

God’s Name is I AM.

At this post I say that you have summed up God’s Will very profoundly.

The order of Hell must be addressed.

.....”For all these years, the theologians have been closer to understanding reality than any other knowledge discipline”.......

As Jastrow said:

.....”At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greated by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries”...... - God and the Astronomers page 107.

God’s Name is I AM.

Now that quote is simply wonderful. Thanks

As Jastrow said...

One more reason to be nice to agnostics like he was.